Dr Santiago Chahwan from the Naples Florida Vascular Group posted previously on his extensive experience with pharmaco-mechanical thrombolysis of ilio femoral deep venous thromboses using the trellis-8 device from Bacchus Vascular. Successful thrombolysis improves patient outcomes when the endpoints of limb function, symptom severity and post thrombotic syndrome are assessed.
The newly-published 2008 clinical guidelines for physicians from the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) on how to treat DVT and other forms of venous thromboembolic disease now recommend pharmacomechanical thrombolysis for treatment of acute proximal DVT. The guidelines are available as a complimentary download at:
http://www.thenewguidelines.org
Hopefully, this will encourage our medical colleagues to accept pharmacomechanical thrombolysis as the treatment of choice in the appropriately selected candidate patients. This validates the management strategy, however I still think there are quite a few institutions that do not utilize this option sufficiently in this large group of patients.
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